Resist materials used for etching, plating and the like in the field of manufacturing conventional printed circuit boards include widely employed photosensitive resin compositions and photosensitive elements obtained by laminating these onto supports and coating them with protective films.
When a photosensitive element is used for manufacture of a printed circuit board, first the photosensitive element is laminated onto a circuit-forming board such as a copper board and subjected to pattern exposure, after which the unexposed sections of the photosensitive element are removed with a developing solution to form a resist pattern. Next, the resist pattern is used as a mask for etching or plating of the circuit-forming board on which the resist pattern has been formed, in order to form a circuit pattern, and finally the cured sections of the photosensitive element are released and removed from the board (for example, see Patent document 1).
In this type of printed circuit board production process, the developing solution used for removal of the unexposed sections of the photosensitive element can usually be any one capable of dissolving or dispersing the photosensitive resin composition layer to some extent, and from environmental and safety considerations the major alkali development types used at the current time are aqueous sodium carbonate and aqueous sodium hydrogencarbonate. Photosensitive resin compositions must exhibit excellent tenting properties that are not affected by the spray pressure of the developing solution or rinsing after exposure, or in other words, excellent “tent reliability”. As photosensitive resin compositions with excellent tent reliability, there have been proposed photosensitive resin compositions comprising bifunctional or trifunctional monomers with urethane bonds (for example, see Patent documents 2-4).    [Patent document 1] Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication HEI No. 4-195050    [Patent document 2] Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication HEI No. 10-142789    [Patent document 3] International Patent Publication No. WO01/092958    [Patent document 4] Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2001-117224